Shadows Thrown On Legend

Famous Groundhog's Accuracy Questioned

February 2, 1996|By San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — He's famous. He's furry. But is he a fraud?

Researchers have examined many weather phenomena, from El Nino to the greenhouse effect to the ozone layer. But as America's most gifted groundhog and renowned forecaster, Punxsutawney Phil, gets ready to tell us today whether we're in for a long winter, a crucial question arises:

Exactly how accurate is the prognosticator? In Silicon Valley, it seemed like a job for computers.

First, a San Jose Mercury News research team looked at the past 109 years of Feb. 3 issues of the Punxsutawney Spirit and Plaindealer newspapers, which faithfully reported each year whether Phil saw his shadow on Feb. 2, meaning six more weeks of winter.

Then, the team looked at weather data gathered by the closest weather station to Punxsutawney, at nearby Dubois Airport.

Then everything was fed into a computer. The bottom line? The renowned rodent was wrong 51 percent of the time and right only 39 percent. The rest of the time it was too close to call.

A long winter means that there was more than the expected average amount of snow or sleet, and lower than the expected average temperature, in the Punxsutawney area for the six-week period after Phil made his predictions. In an early spring, the opposite happened.

Take, for example, 1970.

Phil predicted an early spring. The expected temperature for the six weeks following Feb. 2 was 29 degrees, while the actual temperature was only 25 degrees. Snow/sleet fall for that period was expected to be less than 15 inches but actually came in at 27 inches.

Despite what the numbers say, the people of Punxsutawney count on Phil.

''He's never been wrong,'' said Nancy Puchy, executive director of the Punxsutawney Chamber of Commerce. ''At 110 (years old) he has an unparalleled record of never being wrong.''